White House begins construction of the ballroom
The White House is expected to begin construction in September in a $200 million ballroom in the eastern White House.
- The new White House Ballroom rendering is reminiscent of the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom, which opened in 2005 at the President’s Marlago Club in Palm Beach.
- Mar-a-Lago’s Grand Ballroom painted Versailles for inspiration with intricate gold details and crystal chandeliers.
Twenty years after the Grand Ballroom was opened at President Donald Trump’s Mar Arago Club in Palm Beach, Trump has unveiled another new ballroom on the ground scale. This time it was announced at the White House.
On July 31, the Trump administration said the $200 million construction and approximately 90,000 square feet of White House ballroom would begin in September.
The project was paid by donors, including Trump, and has seating capacity of 650 people, the White House said. The US Secret Service will oversee the security features of the new structure, officials said.
“President Trump is a builder of the heart and has an extraordinary eye for details,” said Susie Wills, who said in a White House news release. “The President and the Trump White House are fully committed to maintaining the special history of the White House, working with the right organizations to build a beautiful ballroom that future administrations and generations of Americans can do in the future.”
The outside style and architecture of the new Ballroom will be “almost identical” to the rest of the White House, Trump officials said. This work includes a major renovation to the East Wing of the White House. There, the president holds a historically large reception. Trump frequently complains that the White House doesn’t have a large ballroom suitable for entertainment.
The outside of the new ballroom, known as People’s House, features the same iconic styling as the rest of the facility, but the rendering released by the White House shows that the interior style is undoubtedly reminiscent of Donald J. Trump’s grand ballroom, inspired by Versailles, which was completed at Mar-a-lago in late 2004 and had its grand opening in 2005.
Here’s what you need to know about the Mar-A-Lago big ballroom and its history:
When will Mar-A-Lago be completed and what are some of its features?
Construction on Mar-a-Lago began in 1922. The house was designed by architect Joseph Urban for the Spanish Moorish cereal heir Marjorie Meriweather post.
When completed on 17 acres in 1927, the crescent-shaped main house had 115 rooms, with 58 bedrooms and 25 bathrooms. Urban attracts classic designs, turning to a thousand winged ceilings at the academia in Venice, as inspiration for the 34-foot ceiling in the living room at María Lago, and the Roman Palazzocizi as inspiration for the dining room’s hand-drawn ceilings for 2002 daily daily news reports.
After a major renovation in 1956, Post added Mar-a-Lago’s White Ballroom and Gold Ballroom as venues for hosting popular charity events and the square dances she was very well known, according to her profile in 2002.
She also added three bomb shelters during the Korean War.
What did Trump add to Mar Arago?
Trump paid Mar-a-Lago $10 million in 1985. $5 million for the property itself, $3 million for the furniture, and $2 million for the $2 million for the beachfront stretch a few years ago were sold to neighbors.
When the Mar-A-Lago club opened in 1995, there were amenities such as a spa, tennis courts and a nine-hole golf course.
Construction of Mar-a-Lago’s $3 million beachfront project began in 2000, adding a two-storey building with a new swimming pool, cabanas and snack bars, a spa, fountains, stairs and staircases.
In 2004, Trump received approval from Palm Beach to demolish an aging Slat home at his Mar-A-Lago facility to build a kitchen to serve the new ballroom of the property, which opened in 2005.
Over the years, some of Mar Arago’s Trump plans have been shot down by state and town officials, including the proposal for 120 Slip Marina. It is also a fragmented concept to build Mar-a-Lago property before opening the club.
How about the Grand Ballroom at Mar-A-Lago?
Daily News first reported in 1996 that the National Trust for Historic Preservation was considering plans to expand a new ballroom or dance pavilion at Mar-A-Lago. As Mar-a-Lago is a national landmark, all major changes must be reviewed and approved by the trust.
“We’re just looking for artistic concepts, we’re looking for different ideas. It’s very preliminary,” Trump told the Daily News in 1996.
The Mar-A-Lago team is a project manager at Ballroom’s Mar-A-Lago, said:
The trust has easements in Mar-a-Lago, which includes two to protect the landscape to the east and west, one to protect the tree line along the property line to the south, he said.
After Mar-a-Lago opened as a club in 1995, the event coordinator at the time took Blackman and Trump to the ballroom they built by mail, saying they were unable to meet the demand for large events.
“There’s no room for them to put weather-resistant,” Blackman recalled what the coordinator said.
When the ballroom was officially pitched to town in 1999, it was to replace the large white tent that Mar-a-Lago had temporarily built to host a massive event at the facility, Blackman said. He said that the structure is not permanent, so the event air conditioning compressors in the tent were placed in the trailer and a temporary bathroom was brought in.
The ballroom was “a very large building,” he said. The record shows that it is 17,000 square feet, larger than the 11,000 square feet ballroom built by mail.
Architect Rick Gonzalez, based in West Palm Beach at Reg Architects, was the lead designer for the project. Blackman said he and Gonzalez had traveled a lot to Washington, DC and the trust also worked to complete the designs the trust approved, so the trust also visited the real estate.
Along with Gonzalez, Blackman said the Mar-A-Lago team “stroke the entire building.”
“It’s hollow, it’s low, it’s behind the wall and it’s really hard to know that the building is there when you pass through the property,” Blackman said.
Before completing the architectural plan, Trump sent Gonzalez and Blackman to New York to meet famous architect Philip Johnson.
Johnson, who passed away in January 2005, refused to take on the task of designing a new ballroom.
“He wasn’t into it,” Blackman said. “He was a lot of angles and he didn’t have to fit that mold.”
Trump also asked Blackman to consult with another friend: crooner Paul Anka.
“I called him,” Blackman said. “It was a unique experience,” he said, as Trump had already made the decision to put a marble floor in the ballroom, “There’s nothing we can do with that. It’s going to be a reflective surface,” Blackman said of Anka’s advice.
Trump has asserted that the new ballroom must be larger than the 15,000-square-foot Poncedele on Ballroom at Breaker Palm Beach Resort, Blackman said.
That was part of the inspiration, but he said Trump wanted to bring his annual International Red Cross Ball to Mar-a-Lago. Trump was successful, and one of the highlights of Palm Beach’s social season soon moved to the Grand Ballroom in Marlago.
“We always thought that the National Trust would help them approve something first, and that kind of thing gave them a ‘good housekeeping’ certificate that could be cashed out at the Landmarks Commission,” Blackman said of the town’s approval process.
The project to build a new ballroom was approved by the Council of Palm Beach in October 1999, but the construction of the new Royal Park Bridge pushed the timeline back several times.
The project received final approval from the Palm Beach Landmarks Committee in April 2002, and the following year, a building permit was issued in August 2003 and construction began, Blackman said. Though his 10-year tenure at Mar-A-Lago ended shortly after receiving his permission, Blackman worked on other Mar-a-Lago projects, including the ballroom kitchen and the giant flag pole that led to the legal battle between Trump and Palm Beach.
What does the Grand Ballroom look like?
The exterior of the ballroom building on the south side of the property between the main house and South Boulevard was designed by Gonzalez and mimicked the style of the Spanish Moorish estate, Daily News of the time reported.
However, the interior of the ballroom is designed with France in mind.
The decoration was painted in Versailles with sparkling marble floors, intricate gold leaf designs, crystal chandeliers and rising ceilings of the 40-foot cooperative. Daily News reported at the time that Gold Leaf only had a price tag of $7 million and the overall project cost $35 million.
“I modeled after Versailles, but there’s nothing like that in the US,” Trump said of the Ballroom in a 2005 interview with Florida Design Magazine.
When it opened, guests reportedly had West adoration for the 17 Strath Chandeliers.
According to a news report, the first major event in the new ballroom was the annual Big Ve Day Gala at Mar-A-Lago ring in 2005.
Daily news reports starting December 31, 2004:
“The 1,200-square-foot loggia leads to a two-storey foyer through a series of Paradian-style mahogany doors with wrought iron boundaries. The stairs lead to a 45-foot observation tower.
Next event: The grand party marking Trump’s marriage with his then-fiance, Melania Nauss. Their wedding took place on January 22, 2005 at the Anglican Church in Bethesda, and afterwards the Celebrant made a short drive to Mar Arago for the reception.
At the reception, Anka, a guest at the wedding, treated her guests with two songs, “Diana,” and the song, “Lady is Trump,” which is called “Lady is Trump.”
USA Today contributed to this report.
Kristina Webb is a reporter for Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA Today Florida Network. You can contact her at kwebb@pbdailynews.com. Subscribe today to support our journalism.
